How to Organize a Real Estate Portfolio and All Your Tools Into One System

0:00Now that I with I have 35 properties, we're buying three more now. I wish I would have started from the very beginning with the first property and just start it inside there because now all the 35, you know how long it's taking me to put everything in there now. And so if you're saying, I'm just going to wait until I have three or four or five properties or 10 properties. Yeah, you absolutely can. But god forbid something happened to you and then you hadn't put it in there. But worst case scenario, sorry, best case scenario, like you get to 10 properties, like, okay, now I'm going to start using this cuz I want to have everything.

0:31It's just going to take you so much time. In fact, I just keep putting it off like that estate planning that binder. So, if you're watching on YouTube, definitely check it on YouTube. I held up my bind. I'll hold it up one more time. Here's my binder that it says legacy estate plan. And I have so much to do and it's been a year. It's been sitting on my desk for a year. I have not done the things that I'm supposed to do because it's so much now trying to catch up. Whereas, if I did it right from the very very beginning with the first property and then just kept building and building and building, you're going to have it done number one. But number two, you're going to save yourself so much time and money and effort because like Kirby, like you and I, you know, as we were figuring this out as we go.

1:06I started in 2006 doing this. I did things so many ways the wrong way. Example, I started an a Ccorporation the first time. I was like, I just need a corporation. I started a CC corporation because I didn't know what I was doing. And then I had to change I changed things at least four or five times wasting so much money and time and effort because I didn't know what I was doing. So now I wish I would had something like this that helped me do everything the right way. — Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I could tell you stories about how much I screwed up in the beginning too. Yeah. But that that makes sense and and you are you I mean people can start using it for free, right?

1:42So, if like people are just getting started with real estate, it's not like I mean you can jump on it and put in your first property for free, right? — Absolutely. And if you go to living off rentals.com/incomebuilder, which I'm sure Kirby will put that inside of the the description, but yeah, you'll be able to get your account completely for free and you'll be able to get get started using it. And we have deal analyzers in there. In fact, we have three different deal analyzers. And in these analyzers and you definitely for Kirby's software that he has for analyzing it's 10 times better than for short term.

2:17It's like that is such an amazing we don't break it down that much. This is for people that already have like an idea and they they can move right into it. But we have three different analyzers and we make it so that it's a green light red light system. Meaning if it's green, hey, this checks out as a good part like that. Let's say cash flow is good or an equity capture is good or the debt service coverage ratio is good. If it's green, then this is probably going to be a good deal. If it's red, it means, hey, alert, you need to fix something inside this property.

2:48So, we try to walk you through and teach you as you analyze. And analyzing a property literally takes if it's a long-term, it's probably going to take you 30 seconds to analyze the property. And then you'll have a red light, green light system. So, it's taking the guesswork out. Now, we are currently trying to help the short-term community as well by adding some more things. Kirby said, "Hey, you're missing this. You're missing this. You're missing this inside that analyzer." And so, but it's never not going to be anywhere near as amazing as Kirby's analyzer. But that's just the start, you know, analyzing a property.

3:18That's just the start of your investing. It's like, how do we then make sure we're making money every single month and create a system around it and continually building a business? Because if you can't scale, then you get stuck at three, four, five properties because you're pulling your hair out because you're doing all the work yourself. I Kirby and I've seen it forever like all the time. We see people — Yeah. They don't build a system, — but when you build that — Oh, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say one one thing that I love that you did also was you know, you started with when you when you organized the conferences that you started like four or five years ago.

3:54They were called real estate wealthb buildinging conference at the time of Rubecon. And then last year you shifted to income building live because you realized your mind works differently when you're focused on just building wealth as opposed to building income. And a lot of people get, you know, they they think those things are synonymous and they're not. And you make different decisions based off building income. And income is what gets you to financial freedom. Can build a lot of wealth and still be trapped in your job and and worried that if you lost your your job, your income goes away.

4:29So, so I think this what I love about this one feature is that most people don't know where they're at in their financial freedom journey. They get into it, they start buying properties, and they got a lot of money coming in, come going out, and it's like, I I feel like I'm a little closer to financial freedom, but I don't know. And you actually have like a meter on there that you can put in your goal and then it as you add more properties it shows you exactly where you're at in that process. So how how does that work?

5:00It absolutely does. Now I'm because as I'm looking through coaching people how to become financially independent. That's Kirby and my goal is like living off rentals master passive income. Our brands are helping people to not have to work at dead end J O. That's I love that term because it's you're living just over broke cuz you'll know this. You're when you're working a job, you're living just over broke because your boss is paying you just enough to keep you working without quitting but not so much money it takes money out of their pocket. If they paid you what you were worth, they would go broke.

5:31So I think you're worth more than anybody could ever pay you. And so if you take just like you you start working with Kirby and he coaches you how to get your first property, you know, you have certain amount of expenses that you have every single month that you have to make sure that you make in order to not go broke or you go into debt. And so what we created was a financial freedom goal calculator where we you get your goal in there. Let's say it's $8,200 a month that you need in order to pay mortgage, insurance, food, all that sort of stuff. Well, every property that you buy because what we do is we get all the information on the property.

6:04We get the loans, we get the values, we get the cash flow, we get all that whenever you start with analyzing. And then once you analyze a property, you put it into your portfolio. When it's in your portfolio, we'll know how much your entire value is of your entire portfolio of all your properties at one quick. In fact, your dashboard, you don't have to click a button. Your dashboard will show you the total value of all those properties. It'll show you the total equity because it knows how much loan, you know, how much money you have in loans. It'll show you how much debt that you have. It'll show you the cash flow that it has. So, anytime you run a calculation on any property, you're going to see all of these numbers and your cash flow.

6:40Let's say you're making a,000, $2,000 a month. Let's just make it easy. $1,000 a month from one property, which I know if you listen to Kirby, he's going to help you be able to do that. $1,000 a month in cash flow in net income. Well, that then we have it way since we already have that information. It's like, let's make it fun. Let's make it where it's a game for us and we could win at a g of life where now that $1,000 is now in your financial freedom goal. It's part of your income coming in. And if you just need, let's say, eight properties that get you $1,000 a month, and you're almost there, like you're 80 $8,000 to get that.

7:13So, because we have all this information, you'll easily see like where what markets, what cities that you're investing in because we have all that criteria, what your properties are, all the act like every bit of activities. You'll store your documents inside of here, your contacts, you even do direct mail. There's so many things inside of here because once you put your one property in there, we track everything and then you're able to see your financial freedom goal. And then in my mind, I'm like, how do I then make this a game? Okay, good.

7:43I I'm I'm a,000 out of 8,200. Okay, I just got to buy another one. I got to And you just keep moving forward. And that's our goal is to make it gified, which means making it fun to invest and as simple as possible. Oh, one quick thing, Kirby, that we're also building in. So Juan is currently building in an AI investor coaching part. It's it's basically — that's what I was going to ask about is AI. — Yeah. Yeah. So think of an AI coach that's going to walk you through. Say you have like three we have a criteria is usually six different criteria when we're looking at any property and let's say three of them are red, you know, red light, green light.

8:20Green light means it's good, red light means it's bad. Three are red and you're like, "Oh my goodness, I don't even know what to do." you'll ask AI, why is this property you know with three red lights and what can I do to fix it and it'll coach you. So it's AI powered investing is what we're building into the software as well to coach you through the process and even you could even ask the question like hey when is when are all of my insurance for each of the properties coming up so I can go out and get new quotes. It'll it'll give you all that information. So think of how do we have somebody on the back end like my you know think of I like I always like Iron Man where he has Jarvis that tells them everything you just ask a question and boom gets everything.

8:59It's like we need that as our business system for our investing where everything is at the touch of our fingertips and all we got to do is ask a question and then it grabs all the information and gives it to us. — Yeah, that's that's amazing. Yeah. And I know you're you're I mean, you you've worked with AI now and you know, you're incorporating it more and more. How do you I'm just curious, how do you feel like AI is going to impact investing just in general in the in the future? Like where what are your thoughts on that?

9:32AI investing. Well, number one, where you and I are and your listeners, so for you listening, you know, you are one of the four major, you're investing in one of the four necessities of life. Food, water, shelter, and clothing. And so, we have shelter. Shelter is something everybody's going to need. If you do it right, how way Kirby teaches you, let's say shortterm it starts falling off the cliff or everybody starts outlawing all this sort of stuff, you can still long-term rent it and still make money. And so, you have an asset. An asset's always going to be making you money no matter what.

10:02That's check. That's number one. AI on top of that, not just a best, I'll get to investing in just a second, but think of the economy and what's going to come. I don't think we really even have a clue of what is coming for the economy because of AI or what's going to happen in general because there are thousands and thousands in fact I think this year alone — close to 200,000 tech jobs have been lost technology jobs like programmers and coders have been lost because AI and companies are saying use AI more and when they say use AI more it change ch trains it to get better and better and then they lose their job.

10:42And so what happens is all these people are losing their jobs. They're they're homeowners. But for us as investors, it's going to be great for us because we buy homes when sadly somebody forecloses because they can't they don't have a job. So I'm thinking coming really soon, there's going to be great opportunities for us. Bad times for a lot of other people, but if you're ready, if you're already investing, you're already working with Kirby, and you're already investing in properties, then you are going to be ahead of this wave that's coming that it seems like there's going to be a lot of problems for other people. But if you're ready, if you've been listening with Kirby, you come back every week to keep listening to the show.

11:15And then you're learning how Kirby's ready, you need to get ready as well. And so I think AI is going to change it to where we are going to have amazing opportunities to buy real estate. Now, one of the last things about how AI would help us or hurt us in investing. It's going to be a very long time before AI can actually own real estate. That's not just so we can we're the ones that are going to be able to benefit from real estate and it's going to be one of the last things that AI can hurt or hinder. And so as long as we can own properties, we're going to be doing just fine. In fact, I used to tell people you should invest in real estate for financial freedom, for tax benefits, for this, this, this, like you should invest.

11:55Now it's no longer you should. In fact, I don't say that anymore. I say you must invest in real estate because if you have a white collar job at all, more than likely in the next two to five years, your job will be gone and you will not make any money because AI's taking your job. And so if you're worried about not having a job or if at all you are relying on somebody else to give you money because of your work a job, you must invest in real estate because your job is potentially on the chopping block if not in fact one of my students already he just said hey just we were talking the other day at the group coaching call that we have and he said Dustin I just lost my job lost I was you've been telling us about this AI thing and my job he was a programmer and stuff my job was taken out by AI and so now I'm so glad I've been investing in real

12:43Estate. So, it's no longer that you should, it's that you must invest in real estate. One quick last thing, I know AI is going to help us as investors more and more and more in the future to how to invest better and invest wisely, but at the same time, there's nothing that's going to be able to replace Kirby and myself and other people, other mentors, other coaches, other people that have done this in the past. Because if you go to AI right now, go to Chad GPT or Claude and say, "Teach me how to invest in real estate." It's going to give you the worst advice ever.

13:14I've done it and every every six months I ask it and it does terrible. It has no clue. It's just taken what people have said for thou, you know, hund hundreds of years and who aren't investors like Kirby and myself and they give the worst advice. And so what you need is you need to be around the right people. And that's why Kirby has his community. That's why I have my community. That's why I put on events and we all just try to help people to connect because even though AI is going to change and I don't even know at what which way it's going to for us to be getting better, but it's not going to replace us as humans that are going to help each other and see each other get past all of our roadblocks and keep moving forward.

13:50— Yeah, that's a great point. There's there's I I can always tell when someone has lived experience when they're speaking you know because the the advice is just so much more distinct in terms of you know the specifics around it and so you know AI is really good at like here's the most popular places to invest and here's generally you know but man it is really helpful to have someone who's who's been down that road before walking you down there And to your point about on the jobs too, I just anecdotally, I've I I know lots of people I've seen lots of people who are part of layoffs recently and you think in the past if you were laid off from a tech job, you're in a good position.

14:34I mean, it's so high in demand, you got another one lined up. But if if you're laid off because it was replaced by a computer and that job just no longer exists, there's going to be a lot of people who are just sitting there saying, "I've got skills for jobs that don't exist anymore." And so, yeah, to your point, like that's when it becomes really important to have another stream of income that doesn't rely on somebody else paying you. You know, it's it's it's an asset that that is a a tangible asset that everyone needs and you got to take matters in your own hand like like you did when you got laid off for the first time.

15:15So yeah, that's that's such a great point. I was just curious on you know some mistakes that you've seen people make over the years. I know you've coached a lot of people. And I think I I always learn a lot. I try to learn a lot from other people's mistakes so I don't have to go down that road. But, what would you say are some of the biggest mistakes that you've seen people make? Just in general as as you've coached people over the years and and you can maybe incorporate how you know incomebuilder.io helps with this, but just in general, I think that's helpful.

15:57One of my favorite Proverbs sayings is that a smart man learns from his mistakes, but a wise man learns from other people's mistakes. So, they don't have to go through that. So, I'm 100% on board. In fact, anything that I do, I try to find as many people that have done it before so I can ask them that same question. What mistakes? What worked? All that sort of stuff because I don't want to learn from my own mistakes. It's costly and it takes time. I'd much rather learn somebody else to pay for it. So, I love it. So I I would boil everything back really down to if you focus on two main things.

16:31Well, do not focus on being an investor. Like don't focus on that. When you become an investor, you think of potentially and sadly I just want the value to go up. In fact, when you buy, let's say you're selling something and may say a pen. I got this pen if you're watching on YouTube. So I have this pen. I know I could sell it for a dollar. Well, if you could sell it for a dollar, that's great. But if you buy it, I'm going to buy this for a dollar now and hope in 6 months or a year I could sell it for $1.25. Why would you do that? You don't go into business doing that because you're going to be losing money. And so if you could buy it for 50 and then sell it for a dollar, then you're going to do it all day every day.

17:06Now the great thing about real estate investing, similar with if that's a property, let's say you didn't even have 50 cents, but it cost you 25 cents to borrow 50. You're out of pocket.75 cents. You still sell it for a dollar. You're making money. So that's the biggest that's the number one thing that everybody I did the same thing. I was going down the same route I until I learned after my first property. It was terrible. And long story short, we all have that idea. It's like one of the biggest things is appreciation. Nope. Appreciation is literally icing on the cake. In fact, I'll be using income builder with the software income builder.io and give these properties to my kids.

17:42So I'm not going to sell it. I don't care if it goes up. In fact, it's great if it does. I'll pull the cash out, equity, refinance, tax-free loan, which is great, buy more real estate, and I'll give these properties to my kids. And I'll just give my kids the login to Income Builder so that they could have everything already right there. And so, what I'm looking at is now we have the ability to build income with every single property. Now, the second key is after that is you need to build a business. You if you don't build a business eventually you're going to be what I call a mom and pop investor which is not bad but after four five six properties you're going to be pulling your hat especially if you're doing short-term you may be three or four properties like I just I don't have time to do this anymore you have to have the right people so those are two main things number one don't be an investor be an income builder and those are two things or that's

18:30The one thing you should not do but what you should should do is be an income builder and build a business when you build the business you do everything right from the very beginning and get around Kirby like join Kir K Kirby's coaching you need to be a part of that so he has all this already all fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig fig figured out and going to show you the fast track that's what I love about you know when Kirby and I coach people what took me nine years to be able to get financial independence my students are doing it three and four years I know your students are the same thing because we've already blazed the trail all the screws that we've done we've now fixed it and made it well for them so they can make it get so much faster but it's it's the fast track is by learning from other people's mistakes, but those are the main ones.

19:09And I love giving, you know, I remember when I wasn't investing, I didn't have a lot of money and I was just working a dead end J O. I listen to these like rich millionaires and billionaires back then the millionaires were the billionaires of today. So now it's you know obviously inflation everything. So just think of like the billionaires. Billionaires would say here are the five things that I learned and they're like remedial in idea like the idea is remedial like build a business. Well that's that's not tangible. How do I actually do it? That's what I was thinking. I was like just give me more more. It's like no what you need are the big base principles like stop being an investor be an income builder.

19:46You need to be an income builder and then in order to do it to build a business part of you might be thinking you're listening I want more tangible more tactical type of things like I completely get it but eventually you're going to learn those if you do not have this base principle. If you're thinking I'm going to invest for appreciation and you because I told you do not do that. You need to go this way by building building income. You'll be hurt like everybody else in 2008. So, when I started investing in 2006, started buying property after property, which were making me $500, $600,000. I have some properties making $3,000 a month in cash flow, long-term properties, and it's it's so fantastic because I just you own longer you own it, the more money you make.

20:24But in 2008, 9 and 10, I can't even count. I mean, there's millions of investors, millions, let's say thousand, most investors, I'll just say that better way I say it. I don't know how many most investors, they went bankrupt. You talk to anybody who was investing back in 2008, they went bankrupt. I didn't. I made more money because I didn't care about appreciation. It's great, don't get me wrong. But what I cared about is feeding my family. And because I invested for income when the the market dropped and everybody was losing their job, sadly, they foreclose in their homes that turn them into renters.

20:59And so I had all the properties, so my rents went up. And so that's what I want you to realize. Is if you're going to make any mistakes, you do not want to make those two those main mistakes. Do not do the wrong way. The right way is building income. And the way to do that is by having a business.